Copyright © 2016 Audrey Gidman. All rights reserved.I received this poem from my new friend Andrea Kozol. It took my breath away and so I share it. It captures everything about the common body, our connection to past, present, blood and bone.
To be clear, it was not snowing in Indian River, Ontario today. I did, however, have the great pleasure of working with these two beautiful girls, Belle and her daughter Blue this afternoon, and a group of nine generous and courageous women. I am teaching Conscious Touch & Conscious Movement with Horses at The Mane Intent, run by Jennifer Garland, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last October when she visited me in Connecticut.
Being with horses always seems to take us where we need to go, often giving us the support that may have otherwise been missing or unacknowledged. This way of working is grounded in the shared languages of movement and touch, and has little to do with conventional horsemanship or riding, although it may nourish both. Rather, it invites to explore connection in unexpected and often surprising ways.
I am so privileged to be invited to share what I have been learning over the past 22 years. It is always new, always deeply moving. And I am so grateful to the horses, who allow us to approach, to touch, to dance, to be.
To learn more, contact me.
I am at the beautiful Mountain Horse Farm in Naples, NY in the Finger Lakes region, teaching a Conscious Touch & Conscious Movement with Horses workshop. The farm itself is beautiful, inviting, expansive. Suzanne Vullers, the owner, is welcoming, wise and playful.
This morning I met the herd, and had the gift of an impromptu, improvisational dance with the lovely mare Cricket. Statsen, the Morgan gelding, formerly a breeding stallion, reminds me a bit of Nelson (above) and of my stallion, Capprichio. Something about both the sensitivity and the confidence.
Teaching is never a display of what I know. It is sharing questions, being open to what is unfamiliar, practicing what the brilliant Pauline Oliveros calls the “unique” strategy, meaning that every moment, every experience is new, subtly different from anything that has preceeded it.
Authentic Movement is perhaps the most profound and nourishing part of my personal practice. It has reshaped my inner landscape in mysterious and unexpected ways. It continues to nourish, unravel and reveal me to myself, after 30 years. The echoes of that ritual exploration send their ripples out into everything I touch and perceive.
Some years ago I wrote this about my first experience of Authentic Movement:
Dropping into the vastness the stillness, the silence, and finding there an emptiness, a balm, and then an eruption, a commotion, a chaos. Wild ropes of movement that had laid dormant, waiting – woven like ganglia into the spaces between the cells, knitted into the ligaments, wrapped around the tendons, sewn into the fibers of muscle, soaked into the bone, into the marrow.
Entering one’s movement is a leap of faith. That you will survive the cellular tintinnabulation of your stillness, as well as the storms of your movement. Entering knowing that you can dive into the abyss and emerge to have lunch and a cappuccino across the street; as if you had not just feasted on your own moving dreams in the corner of a sunlight studio.
I will be teaching an Authentic Movement Workshop in June, open to all. I hope that you will join me. Here are the details:
Moving from the Source: an Authentic Movement Workshop
June 29, 1-5 pm
$85
Danica Center for Physical Therapy and Movement Integration
101 Gay Street
Sharon, CT 06069
information and registration: pjj@paulajosajones.org
508-627-1752